Can Green Beer Be Great Beer?

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Saint Patrick's Day brings two things to American bars: green beer, and heated denunciations of green beer and all who would drink it. The denunciations are easy to understand. Green beer is generally disgusting, tacky, and has no real roots in Irish culture. But just because gobs of food coloring do nothing to improve the flavor of your lager shouldn't mean that green beer must be banished from your St. Patrick's Day toast. (And by the way, if you're looking for an authentic Irish experience this weekend, you should probably avoid St. Pat's altogether and go try building a railroad on an empty stomach.)

No, the answer to the green beer conundrum isn't prohibition—it's making a version that's actually worth hoisting. And surprisingly, given beer nerds' loathing of green beer, some of the nation's best brewers have taken up the challenge.

A few years ago, Sam Calagione, founder of Delaware's boundary-pushing Dogfish Head Brewery, turned to spirulina when some local bars asked him to send over a green St. Patrick's Day beer. The protein-rich blue-green algae is usually found in health shakes; Calagione used it to turn a German lager green. He says the beer had a vibrant color and a rich, earthy vegetable smell he likens to "pond scum, but a good kind." He reasons, "We do beers with raisins and maple syrup, so why not algae?" Alas, the beer didn't quite take off. Calagione hasn't been able to make it since, because Dogfish's production capacity is maxed out. But he says a brewery expansion this summer should allow him to have the green stuff back on tap next year.

Captain Lawrence Brewery embraced green beer this year as a joke—Scott Vaccaro, the New York brewery's owner agreed to brew a few kegs of the green for a St. Paddy's party at the brewery this weekend. But then he realized he had a reputation to uphold and fans to please. So Vaccaro challenged himself to make a beer that would be colored naturally and still worth drinking. He churned out a hoppy, spirulina-infused wheat beer. The beer's bitterness drowns out the algae flavor, but the green color shines through. The beer's name: Gimmicky Green.

For all the legwork Calagione and Vaccaro have put into their brews, the country's best green beer comes from Florida, and it has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day. The Funky Buddha, a little brewpub in Boca Raton, brews a rotating series of Berliner Weisse (a sour, low-alcohol wheat beer) infused with fruits like peach, pineapple, and starfruit. Every now and then, they'll roll out a version made with Key limes, dubbed Ich Bin Lime Berliner. It pours out looking greenish-yellow, like Gatorade, but it's tart and tastes like a pie. If you find yourself down in Boca this weekend, give it a try. Best of all: if you drink it out of a pint glass, no one will suspect its shameful German secret.